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CHAPTER THREE in this forest which resembles hell. So let me be alone. The fair-eyed woman, following the instructions I wrote on her garment, going herself to the house of her own people, will live comfortably.'
With this determination Naişadhi passed the night and at daybreak withdrew from his wife with hasty step.
In the last part of the night with a gentle dawn-breeze fragrant from blooming lotuses, Davadanti saw a dream as follows: 'After climbing a mango tree with fruit, flowers, leaves, I ate its fruit, listening to the humming of bees. Suddenly the tree was uprooted by a forest-elephant and I fell to the ground like a bird's-egg.' Bhaimi awoke then and, not seeing Nala before her, looked everywhere, like a doe lost from the herd.
She thought: ‘An unavoidable calamity has happened since my husband has left me unprotected in the forest. Or has my husband gone to some lake at dawn to bring water for washing the face? Or has Nala been led away for dalliance by some Khecari who importuned him constantly, eager at sight of his beauty? I think he, playing for some time, has remained, defeated by her in a wager made on his staying, since he does not come now. The trees, the mountains, the forest, the earth-only lotus-eyed Nala I do not see.' So exhausted by anxiety, she looked and looked in all directions and, not seeing her husband, she thought about her dream: * The mango was King Nala; the fruit, flowers, et cetera, were the kingdom; the enjoyment of the fruit was the pleasures of the kingdom; the bees were my attendants; the uprooting of the mango tree by the forest-elephant-my husband was banished from his kingdom by fate, having uprooted him; my falling from the tree-I have been separated from Nala. Indeed, according to the dream, the sight of Nala will be hard to attain.'
After she had decided on the meaning of the dream, she, intelligent, thought: 'Two things have happened to me. I have neither kingdom nor husband.' The starry-eyed woman
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